


Growing Pains

by Inkwell



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Rewrite, Closeted Character, Developing Friendships, During Canon, Gen, Muggle-born, Muggle/Wizard Relations, OC main character, Trans Character, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:29:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26426413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inkwell/pseuds/Inkwell
Summary: Growing Pains is the story of Cornelius Larkins, an ordinary Ravenclaw student, who goes to Hogwarts at the same time as Harry Potter. Focus is on friendship and daily wizarding life, not epic battles etc. Cornelius does not know he is trans yet, and thus goes by "she" and "Cornelia" for the moment. Focus will also be on worldbuilding, and therefore there may be small details that aren't 100% canon compliant.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	1. A Mysterious Letter

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I know that I introduce the main character using his deadname, but at this part of the story he does not yet know that he is trans, and therefore he considers himself a "she" and uses a feminine name. This story is partly based on my own experiences growing up as a trans boy.

**Growing Pains**

**Chapter 1: A Mysterious Letter**

_Cornelia Larkins_ , the letter read, written in elegant looping script on a thick white envelope. She rarely got mail addressed to herself, being eleven years old, so already it was exciting. It only got more exciting as she read on. It was her address, _Smith Lane 7_ , then the flat number, but then it specified _the small bedroom, top bunk_. That was unusual. Cornelia stopped reading the envelope and ripped it open, her heart thumping.

Inside was a folded piece of off-white, coarse paper that read thusly:  
 _Dear Ms Cornelia Larkins, as you have reached the age of eleven (11) years old, it is our utmost pleasure to inform you that you have been enrolled in Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Witchcraft. Enclosed is a list of items required of all First Year students; these items are mandatory. Due to your current circumstances, a school official shall assist you in acquiring these items as well as contacting your parents and/or legal guardians. As Hogwarts is a boarding school, do note that every fee for accommodation etc is already paid for by the school board._

The letter wasn’t printed but rather written by hand, with the same looping script as the address on the outside. What sort of items would a kid at school for witches and wizards need, Cornelia wondered, and unfolded the folded-up smaller piece of paper hidden inside the first letter. It read:

_Items list for First Year Hogwarts students: _   
_Robes following the Hogwarts uniform standard, 7 sets of._   
_Winter robes, also within the Hogwarts uniform standards, 1._   
_Sleeping robes, ditto, 2 sets of._   
_Exercise clothes, 3 sets of._   
_Underwear and leisurewear, 7 sets of._   
_Cauldron, iron or pewter, 1._   
_Wand, 1, inquire at Ollivander’s._   
_Telescope, copper, 1._   
_Potion supplies for First Year students, 1 set of, inquire at Bertram Bolte’s Emporium._   
_Broom, accordant with school regulations, 1._   
_Quill and ink set, 1._   
_Optional: a student pet (cat, owl or toad; other species of pet will be confiscated by the groundskeeper)._   
_  
Literature list: _

As she read on, she found a long list of books with titles like _Hogwarts: A History_ , _The Subtle Art of Potionmaking_ , _Magical Botany for Beginners_ and many more, all of which had authors she’d never heard of. All her life, Cornelia had suspected that she had some form of magical powers. She knew that she could sometimes make things happen if she thought about them very hard and did something inside her head, like when you pop your ears. It was only small things, like turning the stoplight green or making the lightbulbs flicker or, in one moment of triumph, speeding up the clock so that maths class ended 15 minutes early. This letter, though… it seemed too good to be true. When she had picked it up, she thought she saw an owl fly off between the flat complexes, like it had something to do with the letter, but perhaps she’d only imagined it.

Cornelia decided to not tell her mum or her annoying little brother about the letter during tea, mum would be busy with her work anyway and her brother was too young to be of any use, being only four.

At seven in the evening, just when mum had finished the washing up after tea, there was a popping noise outside of the front door and the doorbell rang. Cornelia ran to open the door, curious about who it could be; the Larkins family seldom got visitors and especially not unannounced like this.

Outside stood a tall older woman, middle-aged, her greying hair in a strict bun atop her head and square glasses framing her eyes. She wore a severely cut green dress and reminded Cornelia of some sort of strict librarian. The woman smiled a short smile and shook Cornelia’s hand with a firm grip.

“Greetings. I am Professor McGonagall and if you please, I need to speak to your parents.” Her voice was clear, with a Scottish accent. It must be someone from mum’s work, Cornelia thought, and called out:

“Mum, there’s someone from work here for you!”

“Someone from work? Right now? Oh, I’ll be right there”, her mother replied from the kitchen. Professor McGonagall introduced herself again and then asked if she could have a word in private with Cornelia’s mum.

“Go to your room”, mum said.

“Am I in trouble?” Asked Cornelia. It couldn’t be a new teacher at school, could it?

“Oh no, nothing of the sort, I just need a few words with your mother here”, the professor explained.

Cornelia went to her room, which she shared with her brother, and quickly climbed the stairs up the bunk bed, thankful that she was alone in the room and her brother was out playing at the nearby playground. She’d hidden the letter under her pillow, and began reading it again. The first one, congratulating her on her enrollment, didn’t yield any new insight, so she read the items list again. It all sounded so… well, magical. Outside of her room, she could hear snippets of a conversation:

“Magic? But that’s impossible…”

“Not impossible, no. May I demonstrate…”

“...but that violates the law of…”

“...there are laws and there is lore, and…”

“...and my daughter is…”

“...witch, indeed…”

Cornelia peeked through the keyhole into the living room where her mum and McGonagall sat talking, but couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. McGonagall suddenly turned her head and looked Cornelia directly in the eye, as though she could see her, and then went back to speaking with mum. Cornelia shrank back from the door, wondering if perhaps the strange Scottish lady could see her through the door. After all, if the letter wasn’t some sort of joke but was real, and magic was real, then…

McGonagall interrupted her thoughts by opening the door. “Ah, there you are, Miss Cornelia Larkins. Before you ask, yes, the letter is real and magic is indeed real.”

“Wait, if magic is really real, does that make you a witch?”

“Yes”, McGonagall said simply, and did a small gesture with one hand. A glittering sphere of golden light appeared in her palm and she made it float into the air. “That was some magic. You’re a witch too, you see, and that’s why I am in charge of bringing you to Hogwarts. I’m sure the thought is not entirely foreign to you, surely there have been some… signs, strange things happening around you?”

“Yes!” Cornelia almost shouted, her excitement making her heart pound in her chest and feeling slightly giddy. “I can do these little things sometimes, like turning the stoplight green, and once I made the clock move faster, and…”

“Indeed, accidental magic, a critical part of development for a non-Muggle child.”

“Muggle? What does that mean?”

“It’s our word for the non-magically gifted”, the professor answered, a touch of dismissal in her voice. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must be on my way. Several more households to visit. Tomorrow, at eight in the morning, you will be dressed and ready and I shall pick you up for us to sort out your school supplies.” McGonagall said a brief goodbye to Cornelia’s mum and then promptly disappeared, as the popping noise was heard once again. She really was gone, as though she’d never been there in the first place.

“Cornelia, honey, please go to bed”, mum said, a tiredness in her voice. “I… I have some things to think about.”

Cornelia could barely sleep, her thoughts racing with imagery of witches and wizards from books she’d read and films she’d seen. McGonagall was nothing like the old wart-faced hags you’d typically imagine when you heard the word witch, so did that mean wizards weren’t all old men with long beards? Would they all be cryptic and wise, like Gandalf in _The Lord of the Rings_ she was currently reading through? It had been a birthday present from Cornelia’s mum, saying that she herself had liked the book when she was around Cornelia’s age, and her mother had been right; she did like the book. And now she was about to be swept off into some sort of adventure, an appointment with a witch! Finally, sleep claimed her.

* * *

The following morning, Cornelia woke up at seven even though it was a Saturday and she had no school. She walked to the kitchen to get breakfast and saw her mum sitting at the kitchen table, leafing through a folder.

“Good morning, mum!”

“Morning, darling”, her mum answered.

“So, um, what did that McGonagall lady talk to you about?” Cornelia was rocking back and forth on her heels as she tried to sound casual with the question.

“Getting into the big questions early, huh? We had a bit of a talk about that school, Hogwarts, as well as the whole…” She waved her hand vaguely in the air, “the whole… magic thing.”

“And… do you believe in it? Magic, that it’s real, I mean”, Cornelia blurted as she buttered a piece of toast. “And apparently I’m a witch!”

“Lia, dear, you know that I’m a woman of science.” Mum used the pet name Cornelia had had since she was a baby, the one she felt faintly embarrassed about. And she was a woman of science, a researcher at the university, to be exact. “So while it sounds a bit far fetched, to say the least… Well, at its best you are magical and have some sort of hitherto unknown supernatural powers, and at its worst you’ll get to go to a school where they have some... unusual beliefs.”

Cornelia pondered this, and found that she agreed. Some part of her wanted to keep it a secret that McGonagall had shown her that glowing ball of light and how she’d just vanished into nothing and disappeared.

“It’ll be a big change though”, Cornelia said. “A boarding school. Posh place too, from the sound of it. Nothing like scruffy old West Yew Elementary!” West Yew, or West Ew as it was known as by its students, was a fairly typical British school. The building itself had supposedly been an old brick factory, which explained why it had a fairly boring layout, and years and years of council budget cuts had given it a scuffed-up and worn-down look and feel.

“Ah, yes, when you come back for the hols I expect you’ll be walking around with your pinkie out all day”, her mother said with a smile. “Now, if you’ve eaten then you’d better hurry up and get dressed, that McGonagall said she’d come and pick you up at eight to get your supplies for you and I bet if you’re late she might turn you into a newt or something!”

Cornelia laughed at the mental image of herself as a newt and ran to her room, rifling through the dresser for some sort of witchy clothing. She felt like she had to dress the part, and ended up with her worn and patched favourite pair of jeans, a black dress shirt and a long, slouchy cardigan that she could wrap around herself and imagine it was a witch’s cloak.

As soon as the clock struck eight, the telltale pop was heard outside the front door and the doorbell rang once again. Thomas, Cornelia’s little brother, yelled “Who is it?” from their shared room. Cornelia ran to open the door, and was met by McGonagall wearing a similar green dress as yesterday and a similarly strict expression.

“Ah, there you are, ms Larkins”, the older lady said as a way of greeting. On her head was perched a pointed hat in the same bottle green as her dress. She looked less like a librarian now and more like a librarian dressed as a witch.

“Where are we going? I have no idea where to find any of those things on the list”, Cornelia said.

“You’ll be going with me to Diagon Alley, one of the largest shopping districts of wizarding Britain”, McGonagall answered in a brisk tone. Her voice softened somewhat and she added: “Don’t be afraid, I’ll be with you to help you all the way. Now, just take my hand and don’t let go!” She offered her left hand, pulled a carved and decorated stick from out of a pocket with her right and waved it in the air. The moment Cornelia grabbed McGonagall’s hand, she heard the popping sound again, and then everything went dark and she felt like she was on a carousel that kept spinning faster and faster and-

When Cornelia opened her eyes again, they were standing in a London back alley, next to some rubbish bins. There was nothing there except two houses on each side and an old brick wall.

“Is this that ‘Diagonally’ place? It’s a bit, um, small”, Cornelia said.

“Oh, just you wait”, McGonagall said and fired off a quick, sharp smile. She took out the stick again, it had to be some sort of magic wand, and tapped a few of the bricks in a seemingly random pattern. Cornelia gasped as she saw the bricks starting to move and an archway opening up before them, leading to a cobbled street lined by old-fashioned brick buildings. The two of them walked through the archway and into what was obviously Diagon Alley. The street opened up to a small square with market stalls, and shops were everywhere. Cornelia saw an old woman selling strange-looking vegetables from a cart, a small shop window with a garish sign proclaiming it to be ‘The World’s Greatest Collection of Arithomantic Devices’, small shops and large shops and all of them selling all manner of items.

“First, let’s get you your stationery”, McGonagall said, bringing Cornelia back to reality. “Let’s go to Flourish & Blott’s, they’ll be stocking your coursebooks as well.” Still holding onto the professor’s hand, Cornelia was led to a large bookshop, the name Flourish & Blott’s and ‘est. 1785’ painted in large letters on the shop sign as well as on its window. It looked like an old antiquary, with every book being hard-backed and leatherbound. McGonagall led her to a section marked Hogwarts in gently shining letters (some kind of magical writing, Cornelia assumed), where she picked out copies of the books that were needed, making small comments about their contents as she did so:

“Ah yes, that old reliable _Hogwarts: A History"_ , or " _Blytheham’s First-Year Charms_ , back on the syllabus again I see”.

Cornelia noted with relief that none of the books seemed to be about maths, her least favourite subject.

“Mrs McGonagall, um, will there be maths at Hogwarts?”

“Maths? No, not unless you count arithmancy, and that’s an elective subject for the Third Years. However, there’s no escaping my own subject: Transfiguration. It is mandatory for all students from First to their Seventh and final year at the school.”

“Transfiguration?” Cornelia let the word roll around her mouth. “What does that mean exactly, some sort of… trans… transformation magic?”

“Well done!” The professor flashed her a quick, catlike smile. “Simply put, transfiguration is the art of transforming one thing into something else via magic. Now, let’s get you a wand!” Walking fast and carrying two heavy bags of books, Cornelia (now having let go of her professor’s hand) and McGonagall made their way to a small shop with the laconic sign only saying “Ollivander’s” above the door. Inside, the shop was brightly lit and an old man with glasses that made his eyes look enormous waited behind the counter. The walls were lined with small boxes, each about the size of the wand McGonagall had used.

“Ah, Minerva!” The old man’s face wrinkled into one big smile as they entered. “Here with another young Muggleborn, I assume?”

His eyes twinkled at Cornelia and she felt like she should be curtsying. Instead, she just blushed.

“That is correct, Mr Ollivander”, the professor said. “Now, please help young miss Larkins here select her wand.”

“But how will I know which wand to choose?” Cornelia asked, suddenly overwhelmed by the vast amounts of wands on the shelves on the walls.

“Luckily for you, the wand chooses its owner and not the other way around.” Mr Ollivander opened a box, took out a wand and gave it to her. “Here, try waving this around. Oakwood, medium flexibility, ten inches, unicorn hair core.” Unsure and a bit self conscious, Cornelia took the wand and waved it. Nothing happened.

“Ah, of course, I should have known”, Ollivander said and fetched another wand. “This one is holly, Phoenix feather core, twelve inches, high flexibility.” Cornelia waved her wand again and just like before, nothing happened. Ollivander picked out a new wand, occasionally made some obscure comment, and on they went until he gave her a wand made out of pine, with a dragon’s heartstring core and thirteen inches long. When Cornelia waved it, she felt the same sensation she’d felt when turning the stoplights green inside her head, and out of the tip of the wand flew a miniature blackbird that circled the room, sang a high-pitched song and vanished in a swirl of black smoke.

“Excellent! Miss Larkins, I do believe you’ve found your wand!” Ollivander’s face had turned into a mass of wrinkles again by his huge smile.

“Was it supposed to do that? I don’t know how I did that”, Cornelia said.

“Every wand has its own way of showing that it’s been chosen”, Ollivander explained. “The wands have their own character, you see, just like you and me. Soon you shall work together like the best of friends, learning all manners of spells and witchcraft together!” McGonagall didn’t pay but instead held up a small green card that was stamped by Ollivander, just like she’d done with the books in the bookshop.

Their next stop was a shop that sold luggage, which was a relief for Cornelia who was getting rather tired of lugging the books around. McGonagall picked out a leather trunk for her, with small wheels and a charm placed on it that made it slightly larger on the inside than the outside, and slightly lighter than it should have been.

“The bigger the interior and lightening charm, the more expensive it will be”, the Professor explained. “As a Muggleborn student, you haven’t got any access to wizarding currency, for obvious reasons, so instead Hogwarts itself foots the bill for your supplies. Students from magical families are expected to pay for their supplies as best they can. This means that however much I would like you to, I simply cannot afford to offer you the absolute top of the line items. Your supplies will be standard and decent and well enough, though, so don’t worry about that.”

“You said wizarding currency. Do witches and wizards have their own money?”

“Yes, we do. The denominations are galleon, sickle and knut, and for one golden galleon it’s seventeen silver sickles and 437 copper knuts.” When she saw Cornelia’s expression as she tried to do the maths on these numbers, she added: “Don’t worry, it will get easier the more you use it, and soon you’ll count in wizarding coins like you were born to it.”

“How much is a galleon to a pound, then?”

“Oh. We… don’t really do that, you see, the Statute of Secrecy means that we cannot convert a magical currency to a Muggle one or vice versa, it’s forbidden.”

“The Statute of Secrecy? What’s that?”

“It’s the reason you didn’t know magic existed until now. It is a law designed to protect the Muggle world from the dangers inherent in the wizarding world, and vice versa. It’s enforced by the Ministry of Magic, the government of magical Britain.” Ministry of Magic sounded strange, Cornelia thought. She had never thought magic would need any government, but supposed that since they had their own money, why not have a special government as well?

After buying a kettle, a broom and finally a sack of potion ingredients from a horrid, smelly little shop that seemed to mainly sell grisly body parts, it was time to buy her school uniform. The pair entered a shop called Madame Malkin’s Tailory & Haberdashery, and it consisted of a small waiting area with some old-fashioned squat chairs and a door that read ‘FITTING ROOM’ in large letters.

“Go on, pick out your clothes, I’ll be waiting here for you”, MacGonagall said. Cornelia walked inside the fitting room and came to a large room, filled with racks and racks of clothing. She saw long robes with embroidery on them, gem-encrusted pointed hats, and a corner helpfully labelled ‘HOGWARTS’ in twinkling letters that floated in the air. There, the robes and hats were made out of simpler fabrics, but still seemed sturdy and well made. As there was nobody in the room, Cornelia coughed to announce her presence.

“Coming, I’m coming, just give me a second”, came a woman’s voice from one of the small booths in the opposite end of the room, clearly the actual fitting rooms. Cornelia waited and saw a boy that looked about her age, with round glasses and a mop of messy black hair, exit one of the fitting rooms followed by a middle-aged lady with long greying hair flowing down her back. She wore a black pointed hat with pins and needles stuck into it like a pincushion, and instead of a ribbon wrapped around the base of the hat, she had a yellow measuring tape.

“Right, mr Potter, that’s you sorted”, the woman said to the boy, who promptly left the room holding a bundle of clothes. “Now, what’s your name then?” She turned to Cornelia.

“Cornelia Larkins”, Cornelia said.

“First year student?”

“Yes”, she said.

“Right. As you know, the Hogwarts standard uniform is a shirt, tie and a skirt or trousers underneath a robe. Hats are technically optional but recommended as it gets cold up there.” The woman, Madame Malkin herself probably, eyed Cornelia up and down and then handed her a white shirt, a grey skirt, a tie and a black long-sleeved robe. “These should be about your size, try them on.”

Inside the fitting room, Cornelia looked at herself in the large mirror. The shirt, skirt and tie made her look like… well, like an ordinary student at any school. She looked just like any girl. An ordinary face, brown eyes, brown hair. She’d kept it long like her mum wanted, but now she held her hair behind her head to make it look short and just for a moment, she thought she looked a little like a boy. The thought made her happy for some reason, and emboldened by it she called to Madame Malkin:

“This skirt, do you think I could pick the trousers instead? It doesn’t fit me.” She hastily got dressed in her previous clothes and walked up to Madame Malkin.

“You want trousers instead then? That’s a bit… well, I suppose it’s not against the standards, they never did say who’s wearing the trousers after all…”

Cornelia tried on the trousers and felt much better about her reflection. She felt like she looked more like herself and less like she was forced into some cookie-cutter mold of what a girl should look like. With the black robe and hat on, she felt she really looked like a young witch should, or perhaps a young wizard.

“Is the fit all right?” Madame Malkin called out.

“It’s perfect!” Cornelia answered, changing back into her old clothes and carrying the bundle.

“Before I forget, you’ll need a winter robe too”, Madame Malkin said and showed Cornelia a selection of black hooded robes made out of thick wool. “They’ve got a water repellant charm on them, so you don’t have to worry about getting wet. And then there's the exercise clothes, and then...”

Finally, now satisfied with her uniform selection, Cornelia exited the fitting room to find Professor MacGonagall sat in one of the armchairs reading a newspaper.

“Now it’s time we had lunch”, the professor said in her usual clipped tone.

Together they left the tailor shop and walked to a pub called The Leaky Cauldron. It was pretty run-down but full of character, and Cornelia marvelled at the moving photographs hanging on the walls. Witches and wizards, some with and some without the pointy hats, sat by the tables or by the bar. There was a radio playing jazz music, and a shabby-looking pool table stood in one corner.

As they sat down, Cornelia saw a family with five ginger boys of various ages sat around a table across the room, happily eating and talking.

The barmaid was a chubby woman who could have been 25 or 40, and she waved her wand at a previously empty chalkboard that now showed the available menu.

_Soup of the day: Seafood_   
_Fish and chips_   
_Toad in the hole_   
_Ploughman’s lunch_   
_Hamburger with chips_

McGonagall picked the soup of the day, and Cornelia picked it too, not wanting to stand out or cause too much fuss. For a drink she chose pumpkin juice, never having tasted it before, whereas McGonagall chose butterbeer which sounded quite disgusting. The soup arrived in two large steaming bowls, along with a basket of freshly baked bread and a generous helping of butter to spread on it. The soup was tasty and the bread soft and delicious. Pumpkin juice, she discovered, was bright orange and tasted like a mix of orange juice and carrots.

After lunch, the duo headed to Magical Menagerie, which turned out to be a magical pet store. This was the most exciting store, thought Cornelia, who always enjoyed visiting the pet store in her home town and looking at all the animals, wishing her mum wasn’t allergic to fur so she could have a pet of her own.

The store looked small from the outside but was much larger inside, containing all kinds of unusual animals in cages or tanks, everything from puppies with two tails to small multicoloured frogs that tweeted like birds to a whole section with different species of snakes. The owner of the shop was a tall, gangly man who looked to be in his late twenties, dressed in a simple black robe and with an earring made out of some sort of fang dangling from one ear. He wore his red hair in a ponytail, and as he counted the money in the till, Cornelia noticed that his hands were red and mottled with burn scars.

“Afternoon, McGonagall! Another new little student, I assume?”

“Indeed, Mr Weasley”, McGonagall answered, her tone strict but not unfriendly. She turned to Cornelia and added:

“Pets are optional for students, but personally I found the comfort of a pet to be invaluable during my studies. As you know, only toads, owls and cats are allowed for students, anything else will be confiscated by the groundskeeper and as a Hogwarts official I certainly can’t justify buying you such a pet.”

“Toad, owl or cat…” Cornelia mused aloud as she browsed the different animals on display. They were standing in a section filled with bird cages, holding a multitude of owls of all kinds of species. Brass plaques explained what species they were: _Common barn owl_ , _eagle owl_ , _elf owl_ , _snowy owl_ … Cornelia looked at all of them, but none of them seemed to suit her. Besides, could you even pet an owl? What if it bit her?

“My own advice here, don’t pick a toad, they’re very old-fashioned these days”, McGonagall said in a low voice as they moved to a section of amphibians. There were many species of frog and toad here, some colourful in a way that reminded her of poison dart frogs, one looked like it was made out of brass with crystals growing from its back, and several just looked like ordinary garden toads.

They walked on through the store, past a section with magical insects, and found the section with cats and dogs. The puppies looked like Jack Russel terriers and all wagged their dual tails at Cornelia and yelped and whined with anticipation. There were also kittens on a pile of pillows, sleeping or batting at each other. Cornelia couldn’t say the puppies weren’t cute, but she’d always preferred cats, so she walked up to the kittens to get a closer look.

One of the kittens woke from its slumber and gave her a long look with its huge green eyes, as if it was evaluating her. It was the only long-haired kitten, and its fur was a sandy brown with slight stripes and spots. The kitten reminded Cornelia of some sort of wild animal, like a baby leopard or cheetah, especially with the owl-like tufts at the ears. She took a deep breath and made her choice.

“This one, please”, Cornelia said to professor McGonagall and picked up the small kitten. It was warm and soft in her hands, nuzzled her and started to purr. It turned around and she saw that this definitely was a boy kitten.

“Ah, a fine choice! That’ll be one galleon, I mean, I’ll take your card, Mrs McGonagall.” The young man at the till beamed at them both. “Now, do you know how to take care of a cat?” He turned to Cornelia.

“Yes, they need food and water, and a litter box, or maybe he can go outside…” Cornelia said.

“Don’t worry about all that, once you’re at school it will all be taken care of by the house elves. I do have an enchanted collar for him though, that’ll stop him from running beyond the school grounds. What will you call him?”

“Um…” Cornelia thought for a moment, trying to come up with a good name. One name flashed in her head, a name perfect for a companion. “Samwise”, she said. “Samwise is his name.”

The shop owner pulled out his wand, took a simple leather collar from a box and tapped it once with his wand. Samwise appeared written in golden letters on the collar, and when he put it around the neck of the kitten, it was first too big but quickly shrunk down to the right size.

“It will grow with him, don’t you worry”, the shop owner said. “I’ve got this basket you can carry him in, it comes included just like the collar.” He rummaged underneath the shop desk and held up a round basket with a lid made out of chicken wire, so that the cat could breathe and see out.

“Now then, I do believe that’s all of your school supplies”, Professor McGonagall said as they left the pet store. “There’s just one more thing I need to say to you: now that you own a wand, you are considered a witch in the eye of the law. This means that you’re a subject of the law that forbids any individual under the age of 17 to practice magic outside of Hogwarts.”

“So I have a wand that I’m not allowed to use?” Cornelia tried to hide the hint of a whine that crept into her voice.

“Exactly so. It’s for the protection of both you and your family, you know. Oh, and I’ll expect you to be at King’s Cross station on September the first, where the Hogwarts Express leaves from at 11 AM, sharp. Do not miss this train, all First Year students must arrive at Hogwarts via the Express. It leaves from platform number 9 ¾. 11 AM in September the first, do not forget it. And now, please hold on to my hand, we’re off.” With that said, McGonagall took out her own wand and with another pop, they disappeared. The uneasy sensation of travelling this way washed over Cornelia again, and she instinctively shut her eyes. When she opened them, she and the professor were back right outside the Larkins’ flat’s front door.

“Thank you for… for all this”, Cornelia said to McGonagall, who stood next to her, inspecting one of the fluorescent lights in the ceiling of the flat complex’s stairwell.

“No need to thank me, miss Larkins, this is done for all muggleborn students. I shall see you at Hogwarts on September the first, then. Good afternoon.”

With that as her parting phrase, McGonagall disappeared with a pop, and Cornelia was left standing alone with her new magical trunk and cat basket in her hands.


	2. The Hogwarts Express And The Sorting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Again, Cornelius does not know he is trans yet and thus goes by "she" and "Cornelia". The haircut is something I myself often wished to do but never had the courage to actually do myself as a child.

The summer passed in a daze for Cornelia, who kept herself busy reading the coursebooks although she understood little of what they actually meant. Some had little black and white illustrations of wand motions meant to accompany the spells. The most boring ones were the purely theoretical books about magic, filled with lots of strange terms and Latin words she didn’t know.  _ Magical Botany for Beginners,  _ on the other hand, had colourful watercolour illustrations of various plants and mushrooms, and it was at least interesting to look at the images. Cornelia shuddered at the thought of the mandrake, a horrid plant with a screaming baby as its roots, and hoped she could see the polychromatic toadstool in real life as the illustration of the multicoloured mushroom that glowed in the dark simply couldn’t be as good as the real thing. 

She tried practicing the wand motions with a pencil instead of her wand, hoping that it would be allowed, and sometimes she felt the special sensation inside her head when she did it, but nothing ever actually happened. It seemed magic was indeed something that you had to be taught, as all the books kept repeating, and not something you could just figure out on your own. 

The time she didn’t spend thinking about magic or trying to understand her textbooks, she spent reading _Lord of the Rings_. She finished the book in mid-August, and excitedly asked her mum if there was any more like it. 

“Oh yes, Lia, there’s a sequel and a book after that!” Cornelia’s mum had said, smiling and looking a little sad at the same time. “Tell you what, I’ll lend you both of them now, with the pace you’re reading them at maybe you’ll have something left to read once you start school.”

Not soon after that, the 31st of August arrived and mum helped Cornelia pack all her things inside the magical trunk, finishing with the  _ The Two Towers  _ and  _ The Return of the King  _ books as well as Cornelia’s favourite stuffed toy: a much-loved stuffed leopard she’d had since she was a baby and couldn’t sleep well without. 

During the car ride to King’s Cross station in London, Cornelia felt almost normal. She sat in the back seat of her mum’s old blue Ford, with Samwise the kitten’s basket next to her, both wearing their safety belts. The traffic was pretty rough, but it gave mother and daughter time to sing along to the radio and for both to pretend they weren’t feeling a bit emotional. 

“You know, I was thinking..,” Cornelia began. 

“Yes, sweetheart?”

“If I’m magic and you’re not and Thomas isn’t, then… I mean, it can’t just pop up randomly, right? It’s got to be genetic or something, like blue eyes. So what about dad?”

“What about him?”

“D’you think he was magic?”

“He was a magical man for me, that’s for sure. Although”, and here her mum frowned, “I suppose it might explain some strange things that would happen around him.”

“Strange things? Like what?” Cornelia hadn’t known about any strange things happening with her dad. She’d known him as a kind man, often very busy at work and taking many business trips. 

“Well, I can’t pinpoint anything certain right now, but one big thing would be the… accident. That woman from his office came home to me and said it was a case of spontaneous combustion. That’s not real, so I had to pry some, it was my own husband she was talking about after all, and she admitted it was some kind of industrial accident. An industrial accident, for an archeology student working on his PhD? I knew something was off but didn’t pry.”

“Oh, yeah, the accident…” Cornelia didn’t like thinking about it. Previously they’d been a happy little family, with baby Thomas and her mum and dad. Then one day he’d just gone off to work like normal and… died. She’d had to take the day off school just to sit in her room and cry, and she could hear her mum doing the same while trying to soothe baby Thomas’s cries. Everyone was crying and the time afterward seemed to pass through a grey haze. 

Cornelia’s mum turned up the radio and they spent the rest of the car ride in silence, broken only by Samwise the kitten’s small meows. 

When they had arrived to the large parking lot outside of King’s Cross station, mum gave Cornelia a rib-crushingly tight hug, then grabbed her by both shoulders and told her:

“Right, I wish I could see you off properly but I’ve got to get back to work. Remember, study hard, make some friends, and above all: be kind and clever. I know you can do it, Lia, my sweetheart!” With that, she placed a kiss on her daughter’s forehead, hugged her once more and then got back into the car. 

Cornelia had to blink away some tears before she made her way into the building. Platform 9 was easy to find, but how on earth would she find Platform 9 ¾? 

First, she needed to find a bathroom. Cornelia went into the ladies’ room, did her business and then looked herself critically in the mirror. Her mum had insisted she kept her hair in two long braids. As usual, she put her hair back behind her head and pretended it was shorter, then an idea struck her. What if…? She took out her small bag of necessities from her trunk and found her small nail scissors. With them in hand, she took a deep breath and then cut off the braids, leaving a few inches of shaggy, messy hair. This would be her first long time away from her mum, and she could wear her hair however she wanted, couldn’t she? She smiled at her reflection, feeling more like herself somehow now that her hair was shorter. Due to some strange instinct, Cornelia gathered up all the cut hair, wrapped it in paper towels and put it inside her trunk. She couldn’t explain why she’d done it, just that it felt right somehow. 

Having left the bathroom, Cornelia stood back and observed the crowd, noticing that among the usual ordinary travellers there were now a fair few people wearing what looked like robes. They carried suitcases of all shapes and sizes, and some of them seemed to move like they were far lighter than their size would suggest. These people could be her fellow wizards and witches! Cornelia watched some more and saw that they were all walking towards the same empty brick wall separating the platforms from each other, but they didn’t stop at the wall - they walked through it! 

Gathering her courage and hoping it wouldn’t hurt too much if she failed, Cornelia picked up her wheeled trunk and the cat basket and closed her eyes.  _ Here goes nothing _ , she thought, and stepped forward, every part of her expecting her foot to meet the solid brick wall. Instead it met just air, and she took a couple steps forward before opening her eyes again. This was indeed a new platform, the Platform number 9 ¾ as the sign hanging above proudly proclaimed. This platform was less busy but still full of people, mostly kids with their families fussing over them. Cornelia saw the same family of redheads she’d seen in the Leaky Cauldron pub when she’d had lunch with Professor McGonagall. Then a whistle sounded, and she knew she had to get on the big red steam train that stood shining before her. She grabbed her things and ran up to the closest car, picking a door at random and walking in. She came to a small four-seat booth where three girls already sat. 

“Free seat over here”, one of them said, a black girl her own age with a Welsh accent. 

“Yes, come sit with us!” Another girl said, this one looking South Asian with her sleek black hair in two braids and a thick fringe. The third girl was a pale blonde with an odd, spaced-out expression. 

“Hi, I’m Cornelia, Cornelia Larkins”, Cornelia said as she sat down in the empty seat. 

“Hi, I’m Angharad”, the Welsh girl said. “Angharad Evans, pleased to meet you!”

“My name is Lakshmi”, the girl with the fringe said. “Lakshmi Chandra, but just call me Lakshmi, everyone does.” She smiled and offered her hand to Cornelia, who took it. 

“...I’m Luna, Luna Lovegood”, the blonde girl said, as if waking from a dream. 

“Say, are you a first-year too, Cornelia?” Angharad asked. 

“Yes, it’ll be my first day at Hogwarts today”, she answered. 

“Ours too”, Lakshmi said. “What’s in the basket?”

Cornelia showed the girls little Samwise the kitten, and they all cooed over him, petting him gently. 

“I wish my mum would let me bring a pet, she said it’s enough that my brother gets an owl”, Angharad said. 

“An owl, he’s got an owl? Is he also, you know, a Hogwarts student?” Cornelia asked. 

“Oh, yeah! My whole family’s been to Hogwarts, I think.”

“Mine too”, Luna said, smiling a dreamy smile. 

“You know, don’t take this the wrong way, but before you said your name’s Cornelia, I thought you were a boy”, Lakshmi said. This simple statement sent a jolt of happiness through Cornelia, although she couldn’t explain why. 

“Is this your first time at a boarding school?” Angharad asked, and Cornelia nodded. “Mine too. I was taught some stuff at home before, of course, but this is the real big day. My brother said the first day is always the scariest. He also told me to not embarrass him in front of his friends or he’ll hex my knees so they go backwards.” 

Cornelia tried to imagine a person with backwards knees and shuddered. 

“I was taught at home as well”, Lakshmi said. “Hey, Luna, were you taught at home? And what about you, Cornelia?”

“My father taught me loads”, Luna said. “He says the best things to learn you’ll find outside of Hogwarts.” The girls all pondered this statement.

“I’m… My mum is a muggle”, Cornelia finally said. “So I went to a school for muggle kids. None of you’re from muggle families, right?” If the easy way they spoke of things like hexes wasn’t a clue, the fact that these girls were all wearing robes was definitely a clue. 

“Nope, the Evans are an old wizarding family, or so my grandpa says anyway”, Angharad said.

“The Chandras… Well, some of us married muggles, but not many”, Lakshmi said.

“Lovegood people do as they please”, Luna said. “My father says that freedom is the greatest quality of life and that which we must pursue.” 

“Luna, your father seems to say a lot of things like that”, Angharad said. 

“Well, he is the editor in chief of a whole paper”, Luna said. “He works with words all day, so of course he says a lot of words too.”

“What paper is he the editor for?” Cornelia asked. Of course wizards would have their own newspaper, if they had their own money then who knew how many things they had their own versions of?

“ _ The Quibbler _ , Wizarding Britain’s finest paper for seekers of truth and knowledge”, Luna said and puffed out her chest a little as she spoke. It was clear that she was very proud of her father and his newspaper. 

“ _ The Quibbler _ ? But isn’t that the paper for-” Lakshmi began and was summarily interrupted by a metallic rustling that turned out to be a trolley laden with all sorts of snacks and pulled by an old lady.

“Snacks, anyone want some snacks? We got pumpkin pasties, pumpkin juice, chocolate frogs, liquorice wands, and of course Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans!” The old lady half-shouted this through the train car as though it was a rehearsed line and not something she’d actually said. 

“Yes, please!” Angharad shouted in delight. The girls all took out their purses and began counting out their money while the trolley lady patiently waited. Everyone except for Cornelia, who hadn’t got any wizarding money and assumed the trolley at the Hogwarts Express wouldn’t accept a few pence she’d found at the bottom of her jeans pockets. 

“Don’t you like sweets and things, Cornelia?” Lakshmi asked, noticing her reluctance.

“It’s just… um…” Cornelia felt her face turning bright red and hoped she didn’t look too much like a fluorescent tomato. “...I only have muggle money”, she managed at last.

“Oh! Of course! That’s no bother, I saved up my pocket money for weeks for this”, Angharad said and smiled at her, putting her hand on Cornelia’s. “If you don’t know what you want, I’d pick one of everything, except maybe the liquorice wands, they’re nasty. I’ll pay, I’ve got the money!” She brought out plenty of small copper knuts, a fair amount of silver sickles and two golden, large galleons and put them on the table. 

“Is that your order then, young lady? One of each sweet, one pumpkin pasty, one pumpkin juice coming up, then.” The trolley lady smiled at Cornelia and brought her the sweets. “Would you ladies like something to drink? One pot of tea for only 5 knuts, you know”, the trolley lady continued. 

“Oh, yes, some tea would be lovely!” Lakshmi said, and the rest of them made their various orders. The sweets were all set upon a silver tray, as was a large pot of steaming hot tea and four cups. 

“Let’s dig in!” Angharad said, and they began sorting through the pile of sweets.

Cornelia almost dropped her chocolate frog when it started squirming in her hands, but when she saw Lakshmi take a bite out of her own chocolate frog, she steeled herself and took a bite. It was milk chocolate. Inside the frog was something hard, a card, she realised as she pulled it out from the now headless but still squirming chocolate frog. 

“Ooh, which one did you get? I got another Cornelius Fudge,  _ bo-ring _ ”, Angharad said, her voice singsong on the last word.

“I got, um…” Cornelia read the small collectible card. “Beaumont Marjoribanks, discoverer of the plant gillyweed and a pioneer in the field of Herbology, apparently.”

“I got Dumbledore, check it out!” Lakshmi showed the others her card. 

“Wait, Dumbledore as in the headmaster of Hogwarts?” Cornelia asked. “He’s on a chocolate frog card?”

“Well, yeah. He’s one of the pretty rare ones. There’s loads and loads of Cornelius Fudge though…”

“And who’s he then?”

“What, you don’t know? Of course, your mum’s a muggle, right. He’s the prime minister of Magical Great Britain.” Cornelia wasn’t sure she liked the dismissive tone with which Lakshmi said the word ‘muggle’. 

The girls continued to amicably chat as the train carried on, taking them away from London and towards the Scottish highlands.

“Have you thought about what House you want to be in?” Angharad asked in her melodious Welsh accent.

“Want to be in?” Cornelia was confused. She’d known that most fancy boarding schools had houses for the students, but surely they were just something to make it easier to count the students?

“Yeah, there’s Gryffindor, supposedly for brave ones but generally for kids who love sports and that whole thing, then there’s Ravenclaw which is for smart ones and is filled with the nerdy kids, Hufflepuff which is for hardworking kids and tends to be filled with very friendly people, and there’s Slytherin, supposedly the House for ambition but it’s where a lot of the slimy gits end up, or so my brother says.”

“Hmm. If I have to pick one from those, I think it’d be Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff. How does it work, though? Can you just pick a House and the school just has to deal with it, no matter what you picked?”

“Oh no, nothing like that. I won’t spoil the surprise for you though on how the sorting is done…” Angharad smiled a secretive little smile and dug into her pumpkin pasty.

The train ride carried on, and everyone had their fill of snacks. There was a knock on the train compartment door, and a voice called out: “Head Girl here, you’d best change into your uniforms, we’re getting close to Hogwarts.”

With that, the girls began changing into their uniforms, everyone seeming quite unbothered by changing in front of others except for Cornelia, who ducked into the small train bathroom to get changed. She’d never liked the changing rooms for PE, and she didn’t know these girls well enough to feel comfortable changing in front of them. When she came out of the bathroom, she saw that the other girls were all wearing the skirt, shirt, tie and robe combination that had been suggested to her at Madame Malkins’ Tailory. 

“Oh wow, you’re wearing trousers!” Luna said, a smile on her face. “Is that allowed? I thought we had to wear skirts.”

“I didn’t see any rule saying I couldn’t wear trousers”, Cornelia said. 

“Now that’s some Gryffindor thinking!” Angharad said and did a thumbs-up. 

Cornelia adjusted her grey tie and wrapped her black robes around herself as the train slowed down and came to a halt at Hogsmeade Station. From the station, students could see the silhouette of a vast castle looming over them. Beside the station, to the left, were standing several old-fashioned carriages, but none of them had any horses pulling them. As Cornelia watched, students got into the carriages and they moved away, beginning to fly.

“Those horses are weird”, Luna said apropos of nothing.

“What horses?” Cornelia asked.

“Those. The black ones. They look a little like malnourished unicorns, but with wings and no horn.” Luna pointed towards the horseless carriages.

“What? But there are no horses-” Cornelia was interrupted as the largest man she’d ever seen made his way through the crowd of students and bellowed:   
“First Years, to me!” 

The man was as wide as he was tall, which was not an easy feat considering he was easily 10 feet tall. He had a thicket of long hair that joined with an equally bushy beard, and looked simply as if you’d taken a normal heavily-built man and made him larger somehow. 

All the girls, Cornelia included, obeyed him and walked up close to him.

“Now, kids, ye’re goin’ with me. We’ll be takin’ the boats over the Black Lake, so hope no-one’s ‘fraid of water, haha. I’ll take the lead an’ the boats are enchanted to follow me, so there can be no dilly-dallying. Come on then, off we go!”

With that, the huge man led them to the lake’s rocky shore, where a pier made out of rocks had a multitude of small black rowing boats. They fitted four students, so Cornelia and her newfound friends got inside the same one. The seats were worn enough to have little grooves perfect for sitting upon, clearly having been used by masses and masses of students. The large man went first, and as he rowed, the students’ boats were magically propelled towards him. Cornelia found the silence of it eerie, expecting the noise of a motorboat or some sort of engine. However, the silent transportation did make for a more pleasant way of having conversation. 

Luna was leaning over the railing, trailing her hand in the cold dark water.

“What are you doing?” Angharad asked her.

“I’m looking for the Thrice-Horned Scallywags”, she explained with a matter-of-fact tone, as if that explained everything. 

“And, uh, what are those?” Cornelia asked. She’d only heard the word scallywag in reference to pirates, perhaps it had something to do with that?

“It’s a small, almost invisible creature found in many lakes near sources of magic”, Luna said. “My father’s written about them in the  _ Quibbler _ .”

“Ah, yes, the  _ Quibbler _ …” Lakshmi said and rolled her eyes behind Luna’s back. “Paper for those seeking truth and knowledge, or whatever it was.”

“Do not make fun of my father or his paper”, Luna said, her voice still calm but a steel edge having crept into it.

“Oh, don’t worry, I won’t”, Lakshmi said quickly. 

The boat ride continued in awkward silence. 

Finally they arrived at their destination, a harbour underneath the castle itself, and were led up a multitude of dank stone stairs to the Great Hall. 

“Oh, an’ before I forget, I’m Hagrid, Rubeus Hagrid, th’ groundskeeper of the school. If you got any forbidden pets, that is, anything other than a toad, a cat or an owl, I’ll be taking care of them. Now, off you go!” The large man named Hagrid ushered them from the antechamber and into the Great Hall itself, which was indeed a great hall with vaulted ceilings like a cathedral and lit by hundreds of floating chandeliers. The whole place was dominated by the large tables laden with food, and students of all ages were standing by their tables clearly waiting for the First Year students to arrive. 

“Now that everyone is here, I’d like to say a few words.” The man that spoke was wearing a deep purple set of robes, richly embroidered, and a deep blue pointed hat with small stars on it resembling the night sky. His long white hair fell down his back and his beard was equally long and white. In short, he looked just like how Cornelia had imagined a wizard to look. He must be Dumbledore, the headmaster, Cornelia thought. 

“I’d like to begin by saying thank you. Thank you to all students both old and new for coming to this school, and thank you to our wonderful teachers for all the knowledge they’re about to impart on you. Now, without further ado, the hat!” With that, Dumbledore lifted his wand and seemed to conjure forth a small three-legged stool and a very old, very worn pointy hat. Professor McGonagall rose from her seat and stepped forward, holding a large parchment scroll. From it, she began reading out:

“Aaron, Gabriel!” A First Year boy with a mess of blond curls walked up to the stool, sat down and put the hat on his head. After a few moments, a voice came from within the hat itself: 

“Hufflepuff!” One of the four groups of tables for students cheered, the ones wearing black and yellow striped ties, and Gabriel Aaron sat down with them, his grey tie suddenly changed to black and yellow and his grey trousers changed to a mustard yellow. 

Professor McGonagall continued to call out the names of students, and after a while got to Lakshmi Chandra. 

“Gryffindor!” The hat cried out after a short moment, and Lakshmi’s tie turned red with golden stripes and her skirt a maroon colour. The Gryffindor tables cheered and whooped as she sat down with them. 

Angharad Evans got Ravenclaw after a very short moment and sat down with the bronze and blue ties, and the list went on, with students being sorted into the Houses of about equal numbers. 

“Larkins, Cornelia!” McGonagall called out, and Cornelia walked up to the stool. She felt her stomach tying into knots, a nervousness about sitting here in front of all of the students and the teachers. She put the hat on her head and it fell down over her eyes, being much too big. In the resulting darkness, a dry old voice spoke inside her head:

_ Ah, yes. An unusual one. I can sense great ambition in you, so perhaps Slytherin… _

_ Please, not Slytherin, not the slimy git House!  _ Cornelia thought. 

_ If not Slytherin, then definitely Ravenclaw. Yes indeed! _

“Ravenclaw!” The voice boomed from the hat, and Cornelia felt a slight prickling sensation as her tie and trousers turned blue. The Ravenclaw tables cheered, and she sat down opposite Angharad, who was talking softly with an older boy that could only be her brother. 

“...so when d’you think they’ll sort him then?” Angharad was saying.

“Come on, have patience, we’re not at P yet”, her brother said. “Now hush!”

Any further conversation was done in whispers, and Cornelia only heard snippets. Instead, she turned her attention towards the teacher’s long table: in the center was Dumbledore, and on his right hand side was the empty high-backed chair for Professor McGonagall. On his left hand side sat a man with greasy black hair and a prominent nose, whose scowl only lessened slightly whenever a Slytherin student was sorted. To the left and right of them sat a nervous-looking man wearing a purple turban and a very short man in sky blue robes. Near the far end of the table, to the left, Hagrid the groundskeeper sat, and he smiled whenever a student was sorted into Gryffindor. 

Luna Lovegood was sorted into Ravenclaw as well, and sat down next to Cornelia. A long list of students' names were called out, and promptly sorted.

“Potter, Harry!” McGonagall called out, and that same boy with the messy hair and round glasses that Cornelia had seen at Madame Malkin’s Tailory walked up to the stool and sat down. As his name was called out, a low “oooooh” went through the hall. The hat was on his head for several minutes before it called out Gryffindor, and the Gryffindor tables cheered much louder than they had before. Clearly there was something special about this boy, but he looked just like an ordinary, scrawny kid to Cornelia. 

At long last, a dark-skinned boy by the name of Blaise Zabini was sorted into Slytherin, and Dumbledore spoke: “Let us eat, for the sorting is over!”

Cornelia was feeling quite hungry now, and gladly served herself from the large platters of roast beef, racks of lamb, heaps of potato wedges and roast vegetables that stood on the table. She chose a silver gravy boat full of mushroom gravy and poured a generous amount over her plate. The food was delicious, and the cold pumpkin juice that was served in silver goblets was quenching and equally as delicious. 

“I hear you’ve met my sister already,” the boy who was Angharad’s brother said to Cornelia and smiled. “I’m Bran, Angharad’s brother.” He had a similar melodious Welsh accent and the same kind smile and gap between the teeth. “Count yourself lucky, you’re in the best House now!”

“Thank you”, Cornelia said. “The food here is great, you know!” And indeed it was, a vast difference from the boring school lunches of her old school. 

“It sure is, better than mum’s cooking!” Angharad said. 

After Cornelia had eaten her fill, it was time for dessert. The platters of food were magically whisked away and replaced with an assortment of desserts, everything from treacle tarts to pastel macarons. The Larkins household only had dessert on special occasions like birthdays and holidays, so Cornelia made sure to grab whatever looked tasty, settling for some sort of berry tart with custard, a slice of Bakewell tart and some lemon meringue pie. More pumpkin juice was served to wash it all down, as well as pots of tea and coffee. Cornelia noticed that the older students seemed inclined towards the tea and coffee while the younger ones happily drank pumpkin juice. 

“So what’s so special about this Potter kid, anyway? Everyone went ‘oooh’ when he got sorted”, Cornelia said to Luna.

“You don’t know?” Luna’s already wide eyes got even wider. 

“Muggle mum, remember?”

“Huh, I suppose they wouldn’t know about it. It’s something like this: back in the ‘70’s, a dark wizard rose to power, and there was this Great War and he killed lots of people and was generally awful, really awful. Terrible times for everyone. One night he decided to go after the Potter family, because they were part of a group that fought against him, or spies against him maybe, something like that. He killed Potter’s parents easy as that, but couldn’t kill baby Harry. Instead, the dark wizard himself was killed, and Harry Potter survived. The papers all called him The Boy Who Lived, because he survived the killing curse. And then, Harry Potter was raised by muggles I think, so none of the dark wizard’s friends would come after him.” 

Cornelia pondered this. 

“In the ‘70’s, that’s only 20 years ago. So there was this Great War among the wizards and no muggle ever found out?”

“Nope, that’s what the Ministry of Magic is for, among other things”, Angharad cut in. “They’re in charge of the _Obliviate_ spells for muggles who have seen too much.” Noticing the look of incomprehension on Cornelia’s face, she added: “Memory charms. To take away your memory of something. It’s a bit mean I suppose, but it helps keep us secret.”

“Huh”, was all Cornelia could say to that. She wondered if perhaps her mother had seen such things, as a researcher of archaeology, who knew what she might be able to dig up? As she pondered this, the platters of desserts were magically whisked away as well, only empty plates and cups of tea and coffee left on the tables. 

“Now then, dear students, there are just a few things I’d like to say before you leave. First, let’s give a warm welcome to Professor Quirrell, our new teacher in Defense Against The Dark Arts!” Everyone applauded after Dumbledore had said this, and the pale, nervous looking man in the purple turban stood up and smiled vaguely at the hall full of students before quickly sitting down again.

“Another important message is that the Forbidden Forest is, as always, off-limits to students. Try-outs for the Quidditch teams start in two weeks. And… yes, I do believe that’s it, First Year classes will start at 8:30 tomorrow, ask your Head Boy or Girl for the class schedules. And now I bid you all a good night, may your dreams be as sweet as the desserts have been!”

With that said, Dumbledore rose from the table and left the Great Hall, and in his wake followed the students. 

Cornelia followed alongside Angharad and Luna, but stopped in the middle of a step as she saw a shimmering, semi-transparent woman in a medieval looking gown travel through the wall in front of her!

“What is _that_?!”

“Oh, that’s just the Grey Lady, the Ravenclaw ghost”, an older Ravenclaw girl said. 

“There are ghosts?!”

“Yes, but don’t worry, the Hogwarts ones are nice”, Luna said. “Most of them, anyway. Slytherin has got that horrible old Bloody Baron, and I don’t think the blood on his clothes is all his…” 

Cornelia looked in the direction of the Slytherin group, who were walking next to the Ravenclaw students. Indeed, following after them like a gloomy bloodhound, was the ghost aptly named the Bloody Baron, silvery blood spattered over his ghostly clothes and sepulchre face. 

Following the Ravenclaw Head Girls and Boys took them all through many corridors and up many flights of stairs, some which moved under their feet. Finally they got to a tower, and walked halfway up it via large spiralling stairs until they came to an antechamber. The walls here were bare stone except for a large arched door, with the doorknob in the shape of an eagle’s head. The Slytherins had vanished somewhere and weren’t walking next to them anymore. 

“This week’s password is: the more of me you take, the more you leave behind. Who am I?” The doorknob spoke, moving as though it was a real eagle. 

Everyone thought about the riddle, some in silence, others in whispered conference. 

“C’mon, we’re all Ravenclaws here, we can do this!” An older boy called out. 

Cornelia thought long and hard but couldn’t figure out the answer. What could it be? Lovers, maybe?

“I know, it’s footsteps! It’s got to be footsteps”, one of the Head Girls said, her glasses gleaming in the light of the candles lighting the room. 

“Well done, you may enter”, the doorknob said, and then the door swung open. The door led to a large, round room with a high, vaulted ceiling and four smaller doors that led to spiralling staircases. The room had a large fireplace in the centre of it, and on all the walls were large windows that showed a view of the entire Hogwarts grounds. It was decorated in blue and bronze, the Ravenclaw colours, and where there weren’t windows on the walls, there were bookshelves. There was also a large white marble statue of a woman in medieval dress that looked a little like the Grey Lady ghost. Cornelia noticed a strange round chessboard with four chairs around it, and a variety of comfy chairs, all in different styles and shades of blue. 

“Welcome to the Eagle’s Nest, the Ravenclaw common room!” A Head Boy said, pushing his glasses up on his nose after speaking. 

“First Year girls, come over here!” A Head Girl said, a short girl with her face covered in freckles. “I’m Gina Healey, by the way, you can always ask me if you need help with something. I’ll take you to the girls’ dormitories, it’s over here.” Gina showed them to one of the four doors, this one marked  _ Girls’ Dormitory I  _ on a small brass plaque above the door. Well inside, the dormitory turned out to consist of several small rooms, each with two bunk beds inside. 

“All right, Adams, Bartlett, Carlyle and Willow, you’ll have room one”, Gina said, and directed them to their rooms. Luna, Cornelia, Angharad and a redheaded girl named Lucy March got to share room number five. 

After a quick round of rock, paper, scissors, the top bunks were conceded to Cornelia and Luna. 

“Cornelia, sorry if it’s rude, but I just have to ask. Why are you wearing trousers? The uniform is skirts for girls, isn’t it?” Angharad asked from below, in the bottom bunk. 

“I just… I just don’t like skirts”, Cornelia said. “If there’s anything wrong with my uniform I’m sure the Head Girls will tell me.”

“Hmm, I see. I guess we’ll have to find out about the uniform”, Angharad said. 

The girls all began unpacking their belongings from their trunks, which were standing by each bed already. To Cornelia’s delight, Samwise the kitten was in his basket next to her trunk. 

“Oh, it’s so small! What’s its name?” Lucy March asked. 

“His name is Samwise”, Cornelia answered. “Do you want to stroke him?”

“Yes please!” 

With that, everyone gathered around Samwise and petted him gently, cooing over how cute he was. Then Lucy pointed out, with the aid of the old-fashioned wind-up alarm clock she’d put on her nightstand, that it was getting quite late and that they should get ready for bed. 

“Aw, no fun, but I guess you’re right”, Angharad mock-complained. 

They all changed into their sleeping robes, comfortable white ones which reminded Cornelia of nightgowns or old-fashioned nightshirts. 

“Knock knock”, said a girl’s voice from the other side of the door. “I just wanted to say that you should put your laundry in the laundry hamper by the dresser, the house elves will take care of it. And that breakfast starts at seven tomorrow in the Great Hall. Sleep tight, little First Years!” It was probably one of the Head Girls.

The room had a large wooden dresser in it, of a sort that would have made a younger Cornelia try to crawl inside it to get to Narnia, and they all put their uniforms inside there, Lucy taking great care to fold hers properly and Angharad stuffing hers in every which way. By the head end of the beds, small lamps consisting of round glass baubles filled with pure light hanging from brass chains lit up the room. 

“Right, good night everyone, I’ll see you all tomorrow”, Luna said, and crawled up into her top bunk. She took out her wand, which she’d been carrying inside her sleeping robe, pointed it to the lamp and said:

“ _ Nox _ !” 

The light went out instantly, shrouding her bed in darkness. 

Cornelia got her wand out from her uniform pocket and dug out  _ The Two Towers  _ from her trunk, intent to get some comfort reading done. After a moment’s thought, she gathered up her stuffed toy leopard too, shooting the others a glance that dared them to say anything about it. Nobody did. 

After a while of reading, Angharad whispered:

“What’s that book you’re reading, Cornelia? Looked really thick.”

“It’s called  _ The Two Towers _ , it’s a… a muggle story, but there’s a wizard in it. And there’s this dark… well, he’s got magic, but he’s not exactly a wizard. It’s a sequel to  _ The Lord of The Rings  _ by the same author.” Cornelia answered in a whisper.

“Will you two be quiet? Some of us are trying to sleep here”, Lucy whispered in a much louder voice, clearly annoyed. 

“All right, sorry”, Angharad mumbled. 

Eventually, Cornelia felt her eyelids get heavy and decided it was time to stop reading. She got out her wand, enjoying the way it felt in her hand, pointed at the light and whispered “ _ Nox _ ”, not expecting anything to happen, but again she got the special sensation inside her head and the light went out, covering her in darkness like a thick blanket. Covered by a fluffy duvet and her head resting on a feather-soft pillow, Cornelia fell fast asleep. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Worldbuilding notes:
> 
> I do not have the books with me, unfortunately, so from here on out, most scenes will be a rewrite of canon scenes based on my own memories rather than any actual hard facts from the books. I know that technically Luna is supposed to be one year younger than Harry, but I simply couldn't resist having her be Cornelius's friend.   
> The colour-changing uniforms are completely my own invention, I just thought it would look more visually interesting that way.   
> The Ravenclaw dormitories are wholly my own invention.
> 
> From the previous chapter:   
> I decided on a whim to have Charlie Weasley home from working with dragons and working in the magical pet shop. It seemed to make sense for a young man interested in magical creatures, and I just wanted to squeeze some Weasleys into the story even at an early stage. I may have given him the appearance of Bill Weasley, but that's just what happens when you don't have the books with you and are writing based on memories.


	3. First Classes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cornelius still goes by "Cornelia" and "she" at this point in the story, as he has not yet realised he is trans.

Cornelia and everyone else woke up by the metallic ringing of Lucy’s alarm clock. The grey light of a cloudy day shone in through the navy blue curtains. The time was 7:30 and it was time for breakfast. After getting dressed, Cornelia decided it was time to let little Samwise out into the common room; perhaps she could smuggle some food for him from the breakfast. 

Lucy March, it turned out, was one of those people who enjoy mornings, whereas Luna and Cornelia very much weren’t. They were still straightening their ties as they arrived in the Great Hall to see a similar tableau as the arrival feast, but with breakfast foods instead. There were racks of toast arranged after their degree of toastedness, large bowls of dry cereal to be ladled into individual bowls, silver jugs of milk and yoghurt, platters of bacon and scrambled eggs and much more. Cornelia settled for toast with scrambled eggs and bacon on top, and then took the largest cup she could find and filled it with tea. She sat down next to Luna, Angharad and Lucy, who were all reading the same issue of  _ The Daily Prophet _ , which seemed to be the official newspaper of Wizarding Britain. Several other students read the paper as well at breakfast. 

“Anything interesting in the paper?” Cornelia asked. 

“Nah, just some boring stuff, budget cuts for the Ministry and it’s causing a big kerfuffle”, Luna said. “I wish they had the  _ Quibbler _ here, there’s always something interesting in it, like sightings of the Crumple-Horned Snorkack!”

“What’s that?” Lucy asked. 

“It’s a rare magical creature sighted in Sweden, my father says. Its horn is supposed to have great alchemical properties, and it drops it when frightened. Lately father has become interested in it and he likes to put it in his paper where it’s been sighted.” Luna smiled and took a sip of her bright orange pumpkin juice. 

“Everyone knows the Crumple-Horned Snorkack doesn’t exist”, Angharad said. “It’s just something the Swedes made up. Probably to fool gullible tourists.”

“Oh, I didn’t know you were an expert on the magical fauna of Sweden”, Luna said, that hint of steel now back in her usually airy voice. 

“Here’s your class schedules, don’t lose it and don’t get lost!” A Ravenclaw prefect handed out class schedules, written on thick white paper, to all of them. 

“Hmmm, our first class is Potions with Snape, then Charms with Flitwick, then it’s Transfiguration and then lunch… oh wow, Flying with some Professor Hooch after lunch, and then Defense Against The Dark Arts, and then some independent study time. Then we’re free until supper, I suppose, unless they decide to be evil and give us homework on the literal first day.” Angharad read the schedule out loud.

“Flying, is that what the broom is for?” Cornelia asked.

“Wait, you didn’t know? Yes, it’s for flying, of course!” Lucy sounded incredulous that Cornelia would never have heard of such a thing.

“Raised by muggles, remember? I thought the thing with witches flying on brooms were just in the stories”, Cornelia said, and took a large sip of her tea.

“Excuse me, but what’s your name?” An older girl walked up behind her and said.

“My name’s Cornelia Larkins”, Cornelia said, wondering what this was about.

“Will you please stand up? Just a uniform check, nothing personal”, the girl said, and as Cornelia turned around she could see that it was an older student, perhaps in her Fifth Year, wearing a little P badge just like all the other prefects. Cornelia did as she was told and stood up, making sure her back was straight, hoping her tie had actually been tied on straight and not crooked. 

“But you’re… Miss Cornelia Larkins, why are you not in your skirt?” The girl put on her best formal voice, which sounded faintly ridiculous coming from someone aged 15 and not a day more.

“I am wearing clothes that fall within the Hogwarts uniform standards, miss”, Cornelia said and pointed her chin out in defiance.

“Okay, hang on, let me check”, the girl said and started leafing through a tiny black book titled  _ Hogwarts: Rules & Regulations.  _ “Let’s see here… page 57… uniforms… No, you’re right, it just says trousers or skirts, it doesn’t actually say that boys or girls are supposed to wear one or the other. I’m sorry, easy mistake to make, you understand?” The girl then hurried away before Cornelia had a chance to say anything.

“I bet you’ll be getting a lot of that”, Luna said and smiled. “Don’t worry though, soon they’ll have to learn. Hogwarts is a very old school, and some people are very set in their ways.”

Soon the breakfast ended, and it was time to go to their first class, Potions. This was held down in the dungeons, in the castle’s winding cellars. Cornelia did not find the bars on the doors to the Potions classroom the least bit reassuring, nor did she enjoy the porthole-style windows that showed an underwater view of the Black Lake; it only made her think of what would happen if the windows broke and the classroom got flooded. Of course, all of these things paled when it came to the teacher himself. He was tall and dark, with a prominent nose and greasy shoulder-length hair, his expression that of a man who’s just found out that a wild animal has excreted on his pristine carpet. 

“Students”, he began, his voice deep. “In this classroom, I will not tolerate any form of foolishness. Foolish questions, foolish actions, it is all the same to me. A potion does not tolerate mistakes; one stir too many, one piece of the wrong herb included, and your brew can turn from beneficial to lethal. I demand of you the utmost seriousness and respect.”

The classroom, hitherto filled with whispered conversations between the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff students, fell dead silent as soon as he began to speak. “My name is Professor Severus Snape, and you may address me as Professor Snape or simply Professor. Take out your textbooks and cauldrons, and turn to page three, An Introduction. Read until Chapter One.”

The students all did as he said, and many of them brought out their parchment, quills and ink to take notes, should it be needed. The textbook itself,  _ The Subtle Art of Potion Making _ , proved to be very dry and written in a more scholarly tone than the textbooks from Cornelia’s old school. 

“Now then. Chapter One. Who can tell me what potion it describes?” Snape asked. Every student raised their hand. Chapter One described the making of a potion that would cure boils.

“It appears all of you know how to read, that is something at least.” Snape smiled a sardonic smile and continued. “Take out the required ingredients from your ingredients satchel and begin brewing. Follow each instruction carefully, lest anything undesirable occur.  _ Incendio! Aquaferio! _ ” With the last two words, he took out his wand and waved it. Within seconds, small flames were lit underneath each cauldron and they were all filled with water. 

“Hmm, snake fangs, flobberworm mucus, pungous onion, dash of powdered ginger root, shrake spines…” The Hufflepuff boy sat next to Cornelia mumbled to himself as he looked over the ingredients list. The book showed what looked like a woodcut illustration of a cauldron, magically animated so that they could see the correct stirring motion easily.

Cornelia began breaking up snake fangs in her mortar and pestle, taking care to pick ones of roughly equal size and shape in case that made a difference. She had a feeling Snape was one of those teachers who’d expect you to deliver a perfect potion no matter what, and she definitely didn’t want to know what that sardonic voice would say about her if she failed.

When the class was nearing its end, most of the students had produced a passable potion. A Hufflepuff girl’s potion had turned bright green, earning her a look of pure disgust from Snape, and two Ravenclaw boys had been too busy trying to chop their shrake spines into perfectly equal pieces to have time to finish the potion. 

“That’s five points from Ravenclaw for that little display, and three from Hufflepuff”, Snape said. This caused a general murmur of discontent from the students, how could he take away points they hadn’t even earned yet? Still, they only just had time to clean out their cauldrons before it was time to rush to the next class.

Charms with Professor Flitwick turned out to be a much more pleasant affair, the classroom being a large and airy one situated on the second floor of the Hogwarts castle. Navigating the moving stairs up to the correct floor was a bit tricky, but eventually Cornelia had made her way there. She even managed to get a seat next to Luna, Angharad and Lucy! 

“Welcome, dear students, to the class of Charms. Here, you will be taught how to actually use that wand you’re carrying around! This first spell is deceptively easy, but it will show just how well you can control your wand movement as well as if the intent behind your casting is strong and focused enough. We start with the wrist motions, repeat after me please!” Professor Flitwick, a very short older gentleman of a kindly disposition, showed the class how to move their wand. “And now the phrase. As you all know, spells are cast with a phrase as well. The phrase helps one focus one’s mind on the actual intended result of the spell. This one in particular is for making an object levitate off the ground. The phrase is  _ Wingardium Leviosa!”  _ With those final words, and the correct wand motion, Professor Flitwick made the stack of heavy textbooks on his desk float above the table, gently rotating around in the air as though they weighed nothing. Cornelia sat with wide eyes and her attention fully focused on the class. This was magic, real magic! 

It turned out that the spell wasn’t as easy as it looked, and it took several attempts before the quill on her desk even began to move slightly. Cornelia tried to concentrate as hard as she could on the idea of flight, and finally… There! The quill floated up into the air and Cornelia felt the familiar strange sensation inside her head again, the sign of magic being worked.

“Bravo, that’s an excellently performed Levitation Spell!” Professor Flitwick said, smiling. “Five points to Ravenclaw! Others, take note: the flick of the wrist there as well as deep concentration is what’s needed. Now, I know that it may seem tedious and difficult to perform charms successfully, but if you only practice you’ll soon make things float like it was second nature!”

It turned out that they’d been given an easy example to try out as their quills were feathers and therefore held a quantity of the element of air in them, making flight-related spells easier to perform on them. They all received one small copper knut coin from Professor Flitwick, and were told to levitate this instead. This proved harder than the quills, but soon Cornelia got hers to float in the air. 

Transfiguration, then, was with Professor McGonagall, and she looked as strict and librarian-esque as ever as she stood in front of the class.

“Right then”, she began. “Dear students, I’ll have you know that Transfiguration is one of the most dangerous kinds of magic, and therefore it is of utmost importance that you begin to learn it early. A Transfiguration spell gone wrong can have disastrous consequences. However, we shall begin with something quite simple, though its simplicity may prove deceptive for some of you. Now, please open your textbooks to page 5.”

The textbook,  _ Transfiguration For Beginners _ , was of similarly dry and scholarly stock as the Potions textbook had been. This one went on and on about the inherent nature of things and the difficulty of changing one into the other. It all seemed to have something to do with the four elements of water, earth, fire and air, and how they combined to make up the essence of things. Cornelia wondered if wizards knew that everything was made up of atoms rather than elements, but decided that Professor McGonagall was definitely not the teacher she’d like to ask that question. 

“Now, as you’ve no doubt read, you are all aware that everything around us consists of four elements in various combinations”, the Professor spoke. “The elements are the most basic form of matter, and one cannot divide them into anything more basic than they already are. There are not two types of fire, for instance, the fire element remains the same no matter how you try to divide it up. And… ...yes, Miss Xiao?” An Asian Hufflepuff student had raised her hand.

“Um, Professor, I was taught that according to Chinese magical lore, there’s fire, water, wood, metal and earth and those are the elements. Which one is right?”

“Oh, already a scholar of the Chinese school of magic, I see. Well, in this classroom I’ll teach following the four-elements European tradition, but I’ll accept Chinese school-based answers on tests and suchlike from you. I am sure the school library holds many books on the subject of the Chinese school of magic, although I regret to say that they’ll be translations and not in the original Chinese. Ten points to Hufflepuff for that excellent question!”

The Hufflepuff students all smiled and made thumbs-up at Xiao, who blushed and stared at her desk.

The actual point of the lesson turned out to be how to transfigure a matchstick into a needle. It was supposedly quite easy, according to McGonagall, since both the metal needle and the wooden matchstick were of the element of earth. It would be harder to transfigure something into something from the opposing element, and knowing how to play to which elements and properties one wanted the transfigured object to have was where the true art of Transfiguration laid. 

Cornelia tried and tried, but all she managed was to turn her matchstick grey and pointed, essentially a grey toothpick. It was still made out of wood, and snapped easily when tested under the Professor’s long-fingered grip. 

“Decent first attempt, try again and again, it will get easier”, McGonagall said. It seemed a lot of magic was based around practice and precision, you couldn’t just wave the wand around and do anything. In this way, Hogwarts disappointed Cornelia: magical school was a lot like ordinary school after all. To top it all off, Professor McGonagall, to much dismay, gave the class some homework: to write a 5-inch essay on the specific elemental properties of the matchstick and the needle and have it done on Friday. After a long hour of various transfiguration attempts, some partially successful and some not, it was finally time for lunch.

The meal that was served in the Great Hall was toad in the hole, with a mixed vegetable curry as the vegetarian option. Cornelia took a bit of both, reasoning that variety is the spice of life after all, and cheerfully dug in when she’d sat down next to her new friends.

“What do you think of that Professor Snape?” She asked Luna, who was staring off into the distance.

“What? Oh, him. He seems… not too pleasant, to put it lightly. I didn’t like how he removed points as the first thing he did.”

“Me neither, that wasn’t right”, Angharad said. “He’s the Head Teacher of Slytherin House as well as the Potions Master.” Cornelia could hear the capital letters from the way Angharad spoke; these were clearly important titles.

“Oh, so he’s the boss over them? Suits them right, to be honest. If they really are a bunch of slimy gits, like your brother said.”

“McGonagall then, what do you think of her?”

“I think she’s one of those strict, but fair types. I wouldn’t want to be late to one of her classes, can you imagine if she’d tell you off?” Lucy said. They all went silent, imagining this terrible turn of events. 

“Next up is Flying class, that’ll be fun!” Angharad said to break the awkward silence. “Any of you good with a broom?”

“I practiced some at home, if that’s what you mean”, Luna said, skewering a potato on her fork.

“I got a practice broom when I was little but never took to it”, Lucy said. 

“I just know how to sweep the floor with a broom”, Cornelia said, theatrically wringing her hands at her muggle upbringing. The friends erupted with laughter, earning them a dark look from one of the prefects who was walking around and making sure everyone behaved during lunch. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Worldbuilding notes:  
> Not much to say here, except that the Aquafero spell that Snape uses to fill the cauldrons with water is completely made up by me. The notion of elements being important to magic is also something I headcanon.


	4. Brooms and Cards

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Cornelius still goes by "Cornelia" and "she". Playing cards in the common room was very common in the school I went to growing up.
> 
> Worldbuilding notes:  
> The library book is wholly made up, as is the card games.  
> Lore is to the wizarding world what muggles call science, and instead of the laws of nature they have the lore of magic.

Madame Hooch, as she made clear she preferred to be called, was a weathered middle-aged witch with steely grey hair and steely grey eyes, and an aquiline nose that added to the impression of a bird of prey momentarily caught on land instead of up soaring in the sky. Her weathered face betrayed that she’d spent much time outside in unforgiving Scottish rain. 

Changing into exercise clothes (basically a short-sleeved and long-legged black jumpsuit) had been an uncomfortable affair for Cornelia, who was not at all used to the wizarding custom of having mixed changing rooms for both boys and girls. She had found a corner far away from everyone and changed as quickly as possible in there, and saw a possibly-Muggleborn boy doing similarly in the corner opposite to her, while the students from wizarding families got changed in front of each other like it was nothing. But now she had gotten changed and was standing in line in front of Madame Hooch, each student holding their broom, awaiting instructions.

“Right then, students, this is the Flying class. You’ll be taught the basics of broomstick maneuvering as well as some half-decent aerodynamics tips and advice. Some of you will want to try out for the Quidditch teams, and that is fine. Most of you won’t make it onto the teams, and that is also fine. All right, in order to warm up, give me five laps around the Quidditch pitch. Feet on the ground, no brooms!” Madame Hooch blew the steel whistle hanging around her neck to underscore this order, and every student dropped their broom and went off. 

As the start of a class called Flying, Cornelia thought this was a bit disappointing. This was just PE all over again, complete with embarrassing outfits to wear and a cold drizzle coating everyone in droplets of rain. 

After they had run the five laps, all students were certainly warmed up, and some huffed and puffed a bit more than others, Cornelia among them. All in all, the Ravenclaw students seemed to be in slightly worse shape physically than the Hufflepuffs, but it was not a big difference.

“There we go, you’re all warmed up now. Put your broomsticks between your legs, no rude jokes, and tug it upwards like so.” Madame Hooch demonstrated with a broomstick of her own and sort of nudged it upwards to get it to start floating.

Cornelia felt silly with the broomstick between her legs, but the mild embarrassment faded to a sense of astonishment when she tugged the handle and it actually started floating, taking her feet a few inches off the ground!

“Whoa!” A student shouted, and promptly fell to the ground. Madame Hooch helped him up, a Hufflepuff boy with sandy-coloured hair and thick square glasses. 

“Now, steering may sound complicated, but it’s really quite simple. It’s all in how you hold your legs and where you point the broom. Point it to the left and it goes left, to the right and it goes right. Clenching your thighs together will make it go faster, relaxing them will make it slow down. I’d like to see you make one lap around the pitch, please.”

Cornelia tugged her broom a little further upwards, and found that it held her weight comfortably. She gently nudged it forward, and it began moving at a leisurely walking pace. Other students were zooming ahead, with no doubt those who had practice brooms at home. Some, a far smaller number, were taking it slow just like Cornelia. Eventually, she’d made her way around the Quidditch pitch. 

Afterwards, they were supposed to shower, but Cornelia saw that many students opted out of showering in front of students of the opposite gender and instead simply got dressed. She knew that the dormitory in the Ravenclaw Tower had a bathroom, but she wasn’t sure if it included a shower as she’d been very tired and bleary-eyed when she had visited it during the night, and supposed that the other students simply would shower in their dorms just like she planned to do. 

* * *

After her shower in the Ravenclaw girls’ dormitory’s quite comfortable shower, it was time for the next class: Defense Against The Dark Arts. This sounded suitably mysterious and appropriate for a school for witches and wizards, and Cornelia wondered just what these Dark Arts were. The class was held together with the Hufflepuff students again, as seemed common practice for Hogwarts. She wondered if there was some deeper reasoning behind it, or if they’d simply been picked to be together because their House colours opposed one another.

“Greetings, students”, said their professor, who was the pale man with the purple turban from the previous evening’s welcoming dinner. He stuttered as he spoke and stumbled over words a lot, as though he was terrified of the very idea of talking to a bunch of people sitting down in front of him. “My name is Professor Quirrell, and today we’re going to learn some of the basics of the Defense Against The Dark Arts. Please open up your textbooks and read Chapter One.”

Everyone obeyed his order. To Cornelia’s delight, this book turned out to be written in a more modern and accessible writing style than the previous textbooks. Possibly the subject matter had to be updated throughout the years, similar to textbooks of sciences in her old school that had to be replaced when whatever they were teaching became too outdated. The text established that the Dark Arts were both dangerous magical creatures and beings as well as the danger posed by dark wizards or witches, and went on to explain that a dark wizard or witch was one that uses magic in order to harm others. This form of magic was known as hexes or curses, in contrast to charms and spells which were the classifications of benevolent or neutral magic. 

After they had read it in the textbook, Professor Quirrell decided to tell them in his own words, resulting in a mealy-mouthed lecture full of stutters, ‘um’s and awkward pauses. 

Finally, the lesson was over, and thankfully Quirrell seemed too preoccupied with something to even consider the idea of giving them homework. 

* * *

It was time for independent studies, during which Cornelia and her newfound friends sat in the Ravenclaw common room in front of the fire and basically brainstormed ideas for McGonagall’s homework assignment. 

“So, if we go by the European theory of elements and not that Chinese one, what properties does a matchstick and a needle have, exactly?” Lucy said, thinking out loud.

“They’re both of earth, the wood and the metal, and the matchstick obviously has connections to the element of fire as well. I don’t know if there’s anything else about the needle though…” Luna said.

“Good, good, I’m writing this down”, Angharad said, scribbling furiously with her quill on a piece of parchment. Cornelia wrote it down as well, though changing some of the words, not wanting to get caught for plagiarism. She’d heard that the caretaker, Argus Filch, was a very ornery man who gained some deep, dark satisfaction from handling the punishment of rule-breakers. 

“I suppose we could go to the library and see if there’s any books about… hmm… maybe… mythology and alchemy?” Luna suggested.

“Why mythology?” Cornelia asked. She could understand alchemy, given that it handled the basic magical properties of things as well as the elements, but mythology seemed an odd choice.

“That way, we can see if there’s any old god or goddess associated with metal or needles, and… okay, this is a long shot, but you know how the planets are named after gods and goddesses?” Luna said, her voice now much less airy and dreamlike than usual. 

The rest of the group nodded, so Luna continued:

“If we can find some god or goddess connected to needles or metal, maybe we can find the corresponding planet. And if we find the planet, we can use that as one of the properties of the needle.”

“Luna, you’re a genius! Are you sure you haven’t been taking Astronomy classes in secret? It starts on Wednesday, at midnight, not right now”, Angharad said and smiled. 

Together, the group walked down the winding stairs and towards the library. It was pretty much exactly what Cornelia had expected of a magical library: shelves as far as the eye could see, and books of all shapes and sizes. In the front of the library there was a small desk lit by a similar light-globe as the Ravenclaw dormitory, and a serious-looking older witch sat there, eyeing them with concern. The little plaque on the desk gave her name as Madam Pince.

“Excuse us, madam Pince, we’re looking for a book that compares mythology and alchemy, if there are any”, Lucy said. 

“Mythology and alchemy, you say? An unusual request. We do have Burlington’s _Alchemie Through The Lense of Myth_ , if perhaps that’s what you seek.” The old woman pushed her glasses further up her nose and looked through some papers. “It was returned in 1967 and has not been borrowed since. You will find it in the Comparative Lore section, keep to the right until you reach Magical History and then to the left and then diagonally and it should be under B for Burlington.”

“Alchemy through the lens of myth, Burlington, to the right and then left and then diagonally, got it”, Cornelia repeated back.

The walk to the correct section took them between the massive bookshelves of dark wood that held a myriad of books: some looking quite modern, others being the dusty old tome Cornelia would have imagined a magical book to be like. Some books had titles written with some sort of glowing ink, some were covered in strange runes and others seemed to gently whisper to them, a soft susurrus just on the edge of being audible. The library was both fascinating and a bit spooky to Cornelia, and she couldn’t imagine just how much knowledge was stored here, in these books. Knowledge that she had hitherto had no way of knowing. Finally they reached the section marked Comparative Lore, and they began scanning the shelves for the book. Thankfully the books seemed to be sorted in the common alphabetical order after all, and the B for Burlington was soon located. The book itself turned out to be a thick tome bound in grass-green leather, with the title stamped in golden ink. It looked valuable, like someone’s treasured possession, and when Luna opened it, a faint sweet scent of old paper wafted out and filled everyone’s nostrils. 

“Madam Pince, may we borrow this book?” Angharad asked and smiled her sweetest smile.

“Certainly, provided you return it in as good a condition that you found it, if not better. Any doodling in the margins, dog-eared pages or other such malarkey will not be tolerated!” The sternness in Madam Pince’s voice and the look in her eyes said it all: they’d better respect these books and this library, or else… 

“Now, under whose name shall I lend it out?” Madame Pince’s voice became a couple of degrees warmer.

“It was your idea, Luna, why not your name?” Lucy said.

“Sure, I suppose”, Luna said, shrugging. “We promise we’ll take good care of it.”

Madam Pince made Luna sign her name and stamp a wax seal on the little slip of parchment at the end of the book, and that was that in terms of library loans. Cornelia noted that it didn’t seem like Hogwarts had any need for library cards. Then again, if you had magic, what couldn’t you do?

* * *

Back in the common room, Luna started leafing through the book but quickly passed it to Cornelia, who had been eager to study it as soon as she’d seen it. It turned out to be written in very old-fashioned language, and some words they had to borrow another student’s dictionary to figure out. 

Eventually, what they found boiled down to this:  
Athena was the goddess of weaving in Greek mythology, although she was bested by her own acolyte, a woman named Arachne who became a spider. She did not have a planet named after her, nor did Arachne, but they were both associated with the elements of earth and air. 

This wasn’t much, but it gave them something to start with, and through the help of their regular Transfiguration textbook, they managed to cobble something workable together.

“You know, I think this could be something good”, Lucy said. “Ten points to Luna!” Upon hearing that, Luna broke out into a huge smile.

The friends continued writing their various takes on the connection between mythology and alchemy with regards to the matchstick and the needle until they heard the tolling of a bell. 

The bell was the dinner bell, and it signified a very needed break from their hard studies. 

Dinner turned out to be roast mutton or roasted rutabaga, and again Cornelia took a little bit of each. Mint sauce as well as a mushroom gravy was served alongside roasted potatoes and roasted vegetables. The beverage of choice was pumpkin juice again, and she wondered if it contained any special vitamins or minerals that were good for you and if that was the reason the school served it so much. The food was delicious as usual, and Cornelia ate with a healthy appetite after the day’s exercises. 

After dinner, everyone retreated to the common rooms. Two older Ravenclaw students were playing a card game called Exploding Snap, in which the cards actually caused small explosions if you got dealt a bad enough hand. Cornelia asked if she could play too, and the gangly Ravenclaw boy shrugged and handed her some cards. 

“All right, the rules are like this..,” he said, and the rules turned out to be based around luck and chance more than skill. The pictures on the cards were moving occasionally, winking and twirling their weapons and smiling. 

Cornelia soon learnt that the game was more about bluffing and getting your opponent to reveal their cards than anything else, and she began to notice little signs in her fellow players and their expressions. The older boy pushed his glasses up on his nose whenever he got a good card, and the older girl would scratch her head when her cards were bad. It was all such small motions that they were easily overlooked, but if you concentrated and looked hard enough, the patterns began to form. 

“Blast it, First Year, you’ve won”, the boy said. He ran one hand through his messy hair. 

“Beat me too”, the girl said, throwing down her cards on the table, resulting in an explosion three inches in diameter. 

“Best of three?” Cornelia suggested, and her opponents accepted. She won again, and now the two older students looked exasperated. A crowd had begun to form around them, for even the studious Ravenclaws enjoyed a bit of entertainment every now and again. 

“I’m not playing you any more, you’re either cheating or you’ve got the luck of the devil”, the older girl said. 

“Fine, don’t play me, it’s just a game. Anyone else feel like playing with me?” Cornelia put on her sweetest smile. A short, stocky boy accepted, and introduced himself as Erasmus Hawke. Cornelia told him her name and then the game was on. 

This boy was harder to read than her previous opponents, but after a while of careful observation, she thought she had him figured out as well. He played much more cautiously than her previous opponents too, waiting until the last moment to make his moves. The card game grew longer and the score was very close indeed when Cornelia managed to beat him by correctly guessing that his last card was the Five of Clubs.

“That’s just beginner’s luck”, Erasmus said. “Best of three and I’m betting one knut.”

“I haven’t got any money, but how about…” Cornelia paused, trying to think of something she could do as an exchange for money. Suddenly, she had an idea: she’d always been surprisingly good at doing push-ups for someone who hated PE. “If I lose, I do 20 push-ups.”

“Weird, but it’s a deal”, Erasmus said, and the game was on once more. This time she had to concentrate harder, because Erasmus kept his face a mask of blank cheerfulness. She couldn’t tell if he was in it to win it or just enjoyed the game that much.

After a tense final moment, however, her Ace of Spades made all Erasmus’s cards explode, and she won again. Two more games, and now people had begun cheering her on or cheering for Erasmus. Someone put down a bottle of gooseberry fizz next to her, and she drank the soft drink gratefully.

Cornelia tried to get her headspace right and concentrated as hard as she could on reading Erasmus’s face and body language, of reading everything from the way he held his cards to the way he licked his lips whenever a new card was dealt. Soon enough, she thought she could see a pattern, and then she found an opening she could exploit. It took her a few rounds of bluffing and wasting some good cards, but when she saw a glint of triumph in Erasmus’s eyes, she laid down her trump card on the table and listened to the crackle and pop of tiny explosions. 

“That’ll be one knut, thank you”, she said calmly. 

Muttering to himself, her opponent handed over one copper coin. 

“Hey, card sharp, is it just cards or are you scary good at all board games?” Angharad asked from behind her, handing her another bottle of bright green gooseberry fizz. 

“It’s not that hard to play Exploding Snap once you get into it”, Cornelia answered. “Thanks for the fizz, where did you get it?”

“I found a Hufflepuff girl in the corridor on my way back from supper who said she’d gotten these from the kitchens and traded her some chocolate frogs I had left from the train.”

“Huh”, Cornelia said, remembering the complex economics surrounding marbles and their corresponding value in lollipops and bubblegum that went on at her old school. Of course sweets were forbidden on school grounds, but nobody cared enough to enforce that rule properly. 

“How have you got time to play cards when we’ve still got that stupid thing about the needle and matchstick to write?” Lucy asked, who had been a part of the crowd watching the games. 

“We have until Friday, we’ll be fine. You can write yours if you want, I mean, it’s just writing it down in a fancy sounding way now that we have the Athena connection”, Cornelia said. 

“I know some other card games”, Luna said, “in case you want to play some more. No betting, just friendly competition, all right?” She had also been part of the crowd, specifically the part cheering Cornelia on. 

Luna taught her how to play Cripple Mr Onion, Old Man Trouble and Six Foot Soldiers, three card games that were hitherto unknown to Cornelia, not that she’d been much interested in card games before. These seemed more based around skill than simple chance, and bluffing seemed a less viable strategy. Try as she might, Cornelia simply couldn’t guess at what went on behind Luna’s friendly, wide-eyed face.

She lost the first few games, but managed a couple wins once she got into the rhythm of it. Soon the clock struck ten and it was time for them to go to bed. Feeling tired after a long first day, Cornelia called Samwise the kitten to her and fell asleep with him curled up on her chest, too tired to read anything.


	5. The Second Day

The second day started much like the first, with Lucy’s alarm clock ringing and then breakfast in the Great Hall. Cornelia almost choked on her scrambled eggs when a great owl flew in and landed on the table next to Angharad, but she didn’t seem surprised or perturbed at all, she just removed the scroll attached to the owl’s leg and patted it on the head before it flew away again. 

“Letter from my mum and dad”, Angharad explained. 

“What does it say?” 

“Just the usual.  _ ‘We hope that you’re doing well at Hogwarts, remember to do your homework and listen to your professors, blah blah’ _ , that sort of thing.”

“Do all wizards and witches send mail with owls, or is it just a Hogwarts thing?”

“It’s a thing all over magical Britain”, Angharad said. 

“If you want to send a letter, there are owls you can borrow in the Owlery Tower”, Luna said. “I should send one to my father, tell him I’m all right and that sort of thing, and that I hope he finds the Crumple-Horned Snorkack soon.”

“Not that thing again, it’s just something someone made up!” Angharad said. 

“It’s real, I know it”, Luna replied. “If it wasn’t real, why would there be so many sightings of it?”

“People can say they’ve seen anything, that doesn’t make it true”, Angharad insisted. 

“Not this again”, Lucy said. “Let’s just agree to disagree, we need to hurry or we’ll be late for class!”

The class was History of Magic, a subject that sounded quite interesting to Cornelia, but unfortunately was anything but. The class was led by one Professor Binns, the ghost of an elderly man whose idea of a good lecture was to simply read straight from his notes in a droning, reedy voice. Cornelia had started the class excited to learn about the history of magic, with her quill in one hand and her textbook in the other, but soon found it difficult to keep her eyes open. Something about the way that Binns spoke was just incredibly soporific, and the soft pitter-patter of rain against the window panes didn’t help.

She woke up five minutes before the lesson ended, with a small puddle of drool next to her on the desk. Cornelia had never fallen asleep in class before, not even during the most boring lesson, and she felt her face flush with embarrassment. Looking around the classroom, she noticed other students blinking owlishly or trying to yawn discreetly, and felt a little bit better about herself. 

* * *

The next class was Herbology, and it was taught by a chubby, cheerful witch named Professor Sprout. The morning rain had passed on, and a clear autumn sun shone through the greenhouse panes where the class was held. The class was held together with the Hufflepuffs again, just like History of Magic. Their first task was to re-pot some wormwood plants, which went easily enough. Their second task was to burn some spiky bushes, a strange type of plant that could launch its own spikes at any target if threatened. 

“Merlin’s beard and bunions!” A tall Hufflepuff boy got hit by the spikes and swore loudly. The words themselves didn’t seem offensive to Cornelia, but it was clear by the way he said it that it was a curse. 

“Ah, yes, the spikes release a venom that causes a burning sensation”, Professor Sprout said. 

“But, um, shouldn’t you take away some points? I mean, I swore, and I’m sorry for saying that”, the Hufflepuff boy said. 

“Oh no, don’t you worry, I’ve said worse when I’ve dropped a sack of soil on my toes”, the Professor said and smiled. 

“Forgive me for asking, Professor, but why do you have these bushes if they shoot toxic spikes at people?” Cornelia asked. 

“An excellent question. The ashes they form after being burnt with magical fire has great properties for potion making, so really I’m doing this to help my fellow Professor Snape. It’s also a fairly common invasive garden weed, so it’s good that you know what to do if you see some in the wild, as it were.”

Professor Sprout then taught them the  _ Incendio  _ spell, a spell that caused a burst of flame to shoot from the tip of the wand, and then ordered them to take turns trying to burn the bushes. Soon the greenhouse was filled with acrid smoke and lit by magical flames rather than sunlight, and the spiky bushes were nothing but a memory. 

“Mr Hillock, if the burn persists then I’d suggest you see Nurse Pomfrey”, Professor Sprout said to the tall Hufflepuff boy who had gotten stung. 

* * *

The class after that was Potions with Snape again, but this time they shared the classroom with the Slytherin students. It was quickly made clear that Snape favoured his own House, for he awarded points to Slytherin students for asking questions or giving answers he wouldn’t have accepted from the Ravenclaw students. The potion of the day was the Draught of Living Death, which was apparently a sleeping potion so powerful it seemed to put the drinker of the potion into a coma. One of the ingredients for making this potion was essence of wormwood, and another was the powdered root of asphodel. 

“If any of you are foolish enough to want to make this draught, you’re welcome to try. The full recipe is written in a book in the Restricted Section of the library, where no First Year student is allowed to go. Just remember that the art of making potions is very precise. One little mistake and the whole potion is rendered wholly useless. Yes, Crabbe?” Snape was interrupted by a heavily-built Slytherin boy who raised his hand. 

“Don’t we get to make a potion today?”

“Ah, no, not today. Today is going to be spent reading your textbook about the uses of wormwood in particular. And when you’re done with that, your homework shall be to write a 9-inch scroll about the Draught of Living Death and how to counteract it.” Snape smiled an unpleasant little smile, and clasped his hands together. 

The textbook was just as dry and scholarly this time, and when Cornelia checked the endpapers of the book, she saw that its original publication date was in 1902 and that it had been reprinted 10 times since then. That explained the language used at least, she thought, and began reading about wormwood. Wormwood seemed to be an ingredient used in many types of potions, and apparently also in some types of alcohol. However, since pure alcohol was also a potion ingredient, Cornelia wondered if you could use the wormwood-infused drinking alcohol in order to make a potion. She decided not to ask Snape about it, and to try and focus more on what was actually in the book and not strange ideas garnered from it.

Thankfully, the class after Potions was Charms with Professor Flitwick again, and they were taught the  _ Lumos  _ charm as well as its sister charm  _ Nox _ . To better see how his students fared with the spells, Flitwick had dimmed the lights somehow in the chandeliers and pulled the curtains shut over the windows, giving the whole classroom a more intimate, cozy air. Cornelia grasped the charm quickly, and of course she already knew the  _ Nox  _ charm from the dormitory. 

“Remember that this is just the simplest form of the  _ Lumos  _ charm, there is also the  _ Lumos Solem  _ which you may find useful in Herbology as it produces sunlight, the  _ Lumos Duo  _ which produces a concentrated ray of light from your wand rather than just a small orb of light, and of course  _ Lumos Maxima  _ which you will be taught in your Fifth Year.” Flitwick smiled at them and seemed happy with their progress so far. 

* * *

During lunch, Cornelia was busy thinking about the Owlery Tower. 

“Knut for your thoughts?” Lucy asked.

“Oh, I was just thinking about the Owlery. Can anyone send a letter using an owl from there?”

“Oh yes, any student can send a letter using the school owls.”

“To anyone, even to muggles? Could I send a letter to my mum?”

“Definitely. If you just write the address on the envelope and tap it twice with your wand, the owl will know where it’s supposed to go. Very clever birds, owls.”

“I’d like to send a letter to my father, to let him know I’m well and that everything is fine”, Luna said, dipping her bread into the soup that was today’s lunch offering. “We could go to the Owlery together…?”

“Oh yes, that sounds like a great idea!” Cornelia wondered why it seemed like everyone else knew their way around Hogwarts much better than she did, but perhaps they’d been given some sort of rough instructions or maybe a map before they’d arrived whereas she had known nothing about the school. 

“Luna, how is it that everyone but me knows their way around the school already?” Cornelia asked.

“For me, my father gave me some pointers before I left. He’s gone to Hogwarts too, you see, and clearly they’re not big on remodeling and redecorating, so everything should look the same.” Luna showed her through some corridors, and then they found a helpful sign that pointed them towards the Owlery. “It should be the tallest tower, so it’s easy to spot from the outside at least.”

The Owlery was a large tower room with a high, vaulted ceiling and very large paneless windows, so that the owls could fly in and out as they pleased. It was filled with perches for owls and things that looked like large birdhouses for the owls to sleep in. It was also filled with owls, and the whooshing noise of their wings as they flew.

“The ones with a red tag around the leg are school owls, free for all to use”, Luna said. “Have you written your letter already?”

“No”, Cornelia said, and noticed that there was a small desk in the room, presumably for that very purpose. She sat down at the desk, opened a random desk drawer and found it was well-stocked with parchment of various sizes. Another drawer revealed ink and quills.

_ Dear mum, _

_ I am doing perfectly fine here at school. I have made some new friends already and we talk a lot. A teacher gave us homework on the first day, can you believe it? The food is great too, we had a big feast when we arrived and got sorted into Houses. The Houses are in a kind of competition with each other, you can get points for being clever during classes, and a teacher took points away from my House during our first class! It wasn’t even a big thing, just some kids being a bit late with their class assignment, and he took away points before we’d started earning any! Writing with a quill and ink is still a little tricky, but I’m learning fast. There are four Houses: Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw and Slytherin. I am in House Ravenclaw and our colours are blue and bronze. Our animal is an eagle instead of a raven, isn’t that weird? Then again, Gryffindor’s is a lion and not a griffon, and Hufflepuff’s is a badger. I don’t know what I can write to you about the actual schoolwork, but so far it’s much harder than I thought, you can’t just wave a wand and do anything. The kitten is doing fine, I hope you and Thomas didn’t get too attached to him before I left! He sleeps with me in the dormitory, which I share with three girls who are my friends. I don’t know what else to write and I think lunchtime is ending soon, so got to go.  _

_ Much love to you and Thomas, _

_ Cornelia.  _ _   
_ _ P.S: Address your reply just to “Cornelia, Hogwarts, Scotland”, I think that will be enough for the owl. Just say “Letter to be mailed!” and he’ll take the letter from you. _

Satisfied with her letter, Cornelia put it inside an envelope she found in the same drawer the parchment had been in, and carefully wrote her address on the envelope. She addressed it to Janet, her mum, and made sure to specify  _ the large bedroom _ , remembering how the Hogwarts acceptance letter had specified her own bedroom.

Luna was already holding an envelope, having written her letter against the wall. 

“Letter to be mailed!” She called out, and sure enough, an owl with a red tag around its left leg swept down and perched on her hand, ready to take the letter. The owl grabbed Luna’s letter in its powerful talons and flew out of one of the large, arched windows.

“Letter to be mailed”, Cornelia said, and a brown owl swept down and took her letter with it.

“Luna, do you know how the owls are supposed to know where to mail the letters? Muggles don’t use owls.”

“Honestly? I haven’t a clue”, Luna said, and shrugged cheerfully. “I think they’re not ordinary owls, however, but specially trained postal owls. I bet the Ministry has some kind of postal office thing where they train them. How do muggles get their mail, then, if not by owl?”

“We just use… well, people deliver the mail. They use cars or bikes or whatever they have.”

“That sounds ineffective”, Luna said. “With the owls, we don’t have to have people delivering mail, they can go do something useful instead.”

Pondering this, Cornelia kept silent as they walked to their class, which was Transfiguration. During class, not much was different, they kept working on the matchstick to needle transfiguration and Cornelia had only managed to make a slightly sturdier grey toothpick rather than a full needle when the lesson ended. 

After class, they had a long independent study period during which Cornelia and her friends mainly worked on Professor McGonagall’s assignment as well as Professor Snape’s, sitting by the Ravenclaw common room’s fire and writing in almost complete silence and utmost concentration. 

**Author's Note:**

> Magical worldbuilding notes:  
> What the muggle world call the laws of physics, the wizarding world calls the lore of magic.  
> Hogwarts professors regularly help out muggleborn students who would be unable to find the supplies needed for their time at Hogwarts.  
> Cornelius and his family live somewhere in the north-east of the UK.


End file.
